From punch cards to JavaScript, computing history owes everything to those who've programmed the machines

The computer industry has been through a number of generations, each with its own distinctive flavor, often defined by a programming language or technology. They burst out with newborn fervor before settling into a comfortable middle age -- still kicking somewhere because software never really dies.

These new technologies often group programmers by generation. When programmers enter the job market and learn a language, they may stick with the same syntax for life. It's not that it's hard to learn a new language; you can often make more money with the expertise you have, so the generations live on.

Here is our guide to some of the more dominant tech generations in computer history, as embodied by the programmers who gave them life.

The '60s-era computers received instructions from cards with punched holes, a scheme that dates to the earliest programmable looms for weaving cloth. There was recently a story about a punch card programmer for looms in England that still use the old technology to make lace.

Language of choice: FortranSpecial skill: Not dropping the deck of punch cardsSocial media strategy: Joining the right country clubOther career choice: AdvertisingClothing: Dark flannel suitRhetorical tic: "They say there's a need for five computers, but I think doubling or tripling that estimate would be more accurate."Car: OldsmobileSong: Ella Fitzgerald's "Mack the Knife"Favorite artifact: Wreath made of punch cards

This crew worked with 8086 chips and kept the shuttles running by searching eBay for replacement hardware. The computers may not have had much memory, but they traveled farther than the biggest mainframes and fanciest racks.

The first big adopters of computers never would have succeeded without a simple mechanism for writing software that supported the core business. Cobol was the first great tool for writing what the enterprise programmers call "business logic."

Invented to help Dartmouth students learn to write endless loops, Basic became the dominant early PC language when Bill Gates released Microsoft Basic. All the early games and software for the PCs were written in Basic. Today it lives on as Visual Basic.

C grew hand in hand with all of the variations of Unix and is still used by those who love Unix and Linux. It remains the tool of choice for those who program "close to the metal."

Other language of choice: C++Special skill: Remembering to free everything mallocedSocial media strategy: Posts to Usenet three times a monthOther career choice: Bell telephone switch technicianClothing: Red Hat T-shirt from the early daysRhetorical tic: "Wouldn't you rather handle the memory yourself?"Car: Original Toyota Land CruiserSong: Something by the RamonesFavorite artifact: Bell Labs coffee cup

When C programmers looked at the idea of object-oriented programming, they created C++, a baroque version that worked best when the programmer was able to keep track of all the complicated ways code could interact. It took all of the garage-grade DIY intensity and added another way for programmers to prove themselves worthy.

Many PHP programmers fell into PHP by accident. They were creating HTML, and they needed a bit of dynamic logic. One tag led to another, and they found themselves creating websites and CMSes with the code.

They fell in love with Java but remained loyal to Microsoft, perhaps because the boss insisted. The code looks similar. The idioms work the same way. It's pretty much the same as Java, but with a few fixes worked into the mix.

The first group of JavaScript programmers weren't really programmers but Web designers who needed their page to do a bit more. Many just wanted to check inputs, but a few ushered in the unending era of garish animations.

It takes all of 10 minutes to wrap a nice website around MySQL, then years to fiddle with it. The Ruby language offers a clean, low-punctuation syntax, while the Rails framework makes it easy to type the smallest files around. It's almost as if it were designed by carpal-tunnel sufferers.

Other language of choice: SQLSpecial skill: Getting your stack to run on JRubySocial media strategy: Writing a personal version of Facebook in 20 lines of codeOther career choice: Molecular gastronomistClothing: Plaid shirt and jeansRhetorical tic: "You just need a few tables and you're done."Car: MinivanSong: "The Rails Song"Favorite artifact: 37 Signals T-shirt

The second generation of Objective-C lovers appeared during the app gold rush after Apple opened up the iPhone to apps written by outsiders. Suddenly a language slowly dying was reborn.

Other language of choice: JavaScriptSpecial skill: Figuring out how to make the layout manager workSocial media strategy: Posts pictures to Instagram and Hipstamatic but never uses wordsOther career choice: Mortgage foreclosure processorClothing: HoodieRhetorical tic: "This will sell millions."Car: BMWSong: Feist's "1234" or anything else chosen for an Apple commercialFavorite artifact: iPod with a wheel

At some point, JavaScript programming turned into a professional path with snooty ideas and endless debates about clean code. Today, many Web pages are powered by sophisticated stacks that can only be maintained by skilled coders. The field is dominated by libraries that abstract away browser incongruities and offer a sophisticated plug-in structure.

The language of the future offers a functional, statically typed mechanism that can reduce the complexity of event-driven code. The main users are still found in universities, but that's changing as cool open source projects gain traction.

The tool for building map/reduce jobs is technically not a language, but a collection of libraries written in Java. Not that it matters -- writing the code requires a talent for spotting the best way to spread out the workload over a cluster of machines.

They learned JavaScript to add an Easter egg to their band's website. Now they're working for the enterprise using that same JavaScript to handle $10 billion in forex transactions a day.

Other language of choice: jQuerySpecial skill: Trying to remember not to block the server with code that takes too long to executeSocial media strategy: Still bummed Diaspora hasn't gone farOther career choice: Going to collegeClothing: Ironic T-shirt from Old NavyRhetorical tic: "Threads can be concurrent? Are you sure?"Car: SkateboardSong: "Video Games" by Lana del ReyFavorite artifact: Rooted Android phone running Node